Screenland (Nov 1930-Apr 1931)

for December 1930 119 A NEW HOLLYWOOD WIVES' TALE — Continued from page 114 do the heavy cleaning. Some of these jobs are held by people who, suffering from hard times in their own line of work, have been willing to pitch in at anything. But the cook is a good old Southern Mammy, and she knows her stuff ! _ While the Tea Room was struggling under debt and until it got well on its feet financially, Mrs. Lehr had as few people on the pay roll as she could manage with. That meant that during a rush she herself hove to and did a little of everything. She washed dishes, made salads and sandwiches, and waited on table, which she still does, besides her regular managerial duties. There are about eight or ten volunteer workers who serve as waitresses each day. On Tuesday, which is always a big day with about three hundred people to serve, there are more. The names of interest to motion picture goers on that day are Mesdames John Ford, Jack Warner, Sammy Lee, Hunt Stromberg, Tod Browning, Ivan Kahn, Fred Niblo, Harry Beaumont, Sam Wood ; and Misses Catherine Bennett, Flora Bramley and Mary McLaren. Tips are put in a box on the cashier's desk and during the six months they have exceeded the sum of two thousand dollars. The money is used to purchase up-to-date kitchen equipment and china for the dining room. Knowing this, some of the patrons tip generously. Erich Von Stroheim left one penny at his plate and put five dollars in the tip box on one occasion when he lunched there with Jean Hersholt ! Kitchen work was somewhat hampered at first. Five electric coffee pots, sufficient for former needs, had to be kept on the job all the time — now a very swell hotel percolator doees the honors. Two hotel-style gas ranges have been installed and the old stove is also employed. A place in a cool wing of the airy kitchen is provided for a two-ring burner for toasted sandwiches. There + . is also a little sink there and a long narrow table for sandwich making. The ice box problem got to be terrible and reluctantly Mrs. Lehr forked out of the tip box three hundred dollars for a giant one, not electric because one that size would have cost about a thousand dollars. Jerome Kern, the famous composer, heard about the new ice box and sent his check as a donation for the full amount. The china is not the thick, clumsy stuff usually found, but dainty and attractive, such as one finds in the better tea rooms. Although the place has grown so terrifically the waitresses still supply the delicious desserts for the day, all of which are home-made. Mrs. Tod Browning brings chocolate rolls with whipped cream ; Mrs. Gardner Sullivan brings berry pies ; Mrs. Owen Moore, chocolate cake. Mrs. Hunt Stromberg brings cheese cake that melts in your mouth ; Mrs. Henry King, Boston-cream pies, and Carmen Pantages, who is working in the Day Nursery as well as the tea room, brings perfectly marvellous kiss pies. These pies are made by Carmen's grandmother and no one else knows how to make them. The recipe was given her by her mother when she died and will probably be passed on to Carmen. The old lady rises at dawn to get them ready on the day her granddaughter serves the League. Sally Blane's mother makes her special recipe for baked beans on Sally's day and Mrs. George Fitzmaurice brings the famous Fitzmaurice hash every Friday. I don't know who supplies the egg-nog pies, but they put joy in your soul even if they do add pounds to your flesh. I have only given a partial list of names and donations. I haven't touched on the list of society girls in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, Hollywood and Pasadena who loyally do their bit. But because of the spirit of the place I know there won't be any hurt feelings. Pub licity isn't what they are there for. They have proved that. Tea Room prices are reasonable. Dinners are a dollar and a quarter, luncheons are a la carte. If you have a toasted sandwich and one of the delicious desserts you are only set back forty cents, for tea and coffee are free. A plate lunch or a choice of anything on the menu with a salad, dessert and coffee will be all you can stagger out under and the bill will be between sixty and seventy-five cents. Mrs. Tod Browning played a joke on her husband, Fred Niblo, Harry Rapf and several others from Metro who came in a party. She charged everything as a special order and even tabulated the tea and coffee. The bill finally worked itself up to twelve dollars. Mrs. Lehr was scandalized, Mrs. Browning triumphant, but the boys were good sports and left handsome tips. One day when Mrs. Niblo was serving her husband watched her critically. She was just so earnest and conscientious it amused him. "Enid, look at these other girls. They are all smiling, while you look as if you were going through a terrible ordeal." Mrs. Niblo burst out laughing. "I am so afraid I'll forget something," she said. But after that the charming Enid Bennett smile got on the job. I don't suppose there is a place in the world except Hollywood in which Mrs. Lehr could do quite what she has done. She herself feels that the whole success of the thing has hung upon the loyalty of her supporters and the fact that the volunteer workers have public interest. Tourists are beginning to know about the place and come in by the hundreds. Yet I am sure that without Mrs. Lehr's efficient handling the place would not be the great success it is. Interest in the League proves that some very real things and some very real people are to be found in giddy, glamorous Hollywood. _+ A TAYLOR-MADE GIRL — Continued from page 66 they can't help it," she was saying. "It must be some cosmic force that makes them do things even though, at the time, they wonder why they do it. I suppose it is the same force that makes the sea pound never-endingly on the shores. I know it has always been so with me. There is something inside of me that says, 'You must do this. You must do this!' And I do it because I can't help myself, although I have often thought doing something else would be so much easier. But it seems to give me a means of expression that I need to find out what me really is like, what kind of stuff Estelle Taylor really is made of and what she can be moulded into. _ "I remember a time just after my marriage to Jack. He wanted me to leave the screen. He paced up and down the room like a caged lion — as many a husband has done before and will again for the same reason — elaborating upon all the reasons why I should leave the screen, and wondering why I wanted to go on with a career. 'I'll settle two hundred thousand dollars on you, for you to use anyway you like. That's more than you will make in ten years on the scieen.' Neither Jack nor I thought I was a good actress but I sur prised us both, for I've made almost that much in less than ten years, and I haven't worked steadily, either. "That night, however, I wondered passionately and resentfully why it was I couldn't give up acting and be Mrs. Jack Dempsey if it meant so much to him. I tried to. Oh, I tried very hard, but I couldn't do it. I felt like a swimmer beyond his depth, fighting, fighting, for life. I saw Estelle Taylor sinking into a shadow, a ghost. It was an inferiority complex, a terrible one, and I felt I just would have to conquer it by obeying the thing that kept pounding at my brain. Act, act, act, it said. "I didn't feel that I was born to be an actress or that acting was the ideal and ultimate means of expression for me, but it seemed to be the only means, at that time, that the world offered me. And so I determined to set my teeth into it and conquer it. "Talking pictures brought me the thing that has given me greater happiness than anything I have ever known — singing. I adore it. When a person sings, so much can be expressed quite unconsciously. One sings if one is sad, and relief comes. One sings if one is happy — and becomes hap pier. There is a feeling of freedom and power and joy that comes to me when I sing that is the most marvelous thing I have ever experienced. Everyone should sing. It is the greatest safety valve in the world." Estelle is handling this new branch of her career very well. She studied for months and then went out on a vaudeville tour to contact audiences and overcome nervousness. Also, to get a reaction as to whether she was good or bad. The result was encouraging as an artist but by the time she got home she didn't care about that. She had found the thing that carried her out of herself. She didn't care, really, if she ever used it professionally. She continued working and her teacher fired her ambition. Her voice sank to an awed whisper when she told me that her ambition was the concert stage. "I haven't enough experience yet and my voice is not under the control it must be, but I'm going to work hard and I feel I'll get there eventually." She refuses to sing in pictures until her voice is seasoned. She has been offered several parts that must have been hard to turn down but on most of them she wouldn't even make a test. Speaking of